Thales yesterday unveiled a new system designed to greatly improve the survival chances of crews and passengers in helicopters under fire in the front lines of today’s wars.
Elix-IR is designed to detect threats not only from shoulder-fired guided missiles but also from weapons such as medium-calibre machine guns and the ubiquitous RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade.
“Guns and RPGs are numerous, easy to use and easy to hide,” says Alex Cresswell, managing director of the Thales Land and Joint Systems Division. “When fired, they are difficult to detect, locate and characterise from a noisy helicopter. The result can be the political nightmare of helicopters full of troops being shot down by simple weapons.”
With its ability to warn of a weapon firing and give a precise bearing on the firing point, Elix-IR is intended to give pilots the reaction time and vital information they need to take effective evasive action.
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Elix-IR builds on Thales technology already proved in two operational passive infra-red detectors: the unit used to cue the British Army’s Starstreak surface-to-air missile, and the Eurofighter Typhoon’s Pirate (Passive Infra-red Airborne Tracking Equipment).
“New developments to suit this basic hardware for the helicopter protection role include algorithms to help with the extraction of targets from very noisy backgrounds,” says Cresswell.
Thales plans to offer Elix-IR in both stand-alone form – to act as the aircraft’s sole or primary defensive sensor system – or fully integrated into a defensive aids suite. In either case it could be used to cue a gun or other weapon system to suppress the threat.
With a total installed weight of around 30kg, Elix-IR has been developed as a technology demonstration programme jointly funded by Thales and the Ministry of Defence. The company has also received contracts from Australia and France to study the system’s applicability to armoured fighting vehicles.
“We expect to have production units early next year, with a fully fieldable system to follow before the year is out,” says Cresswell.”
Thales sees the system being put to a number of other uses. Future applications could include installation in UAVs as a source of sense-and-avoid information to facilitate operations in military/civil airspace.
Source: Flight International
